


harmless phantoms on their errands

by fujoshi_robo



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Haunted Houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fujoshi_robo/pseuds/fujoshi_robo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Duke of Detroit is a pain, but he knows how to throw a Halloween bash. Chuck hauls the Burners to a haunted house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	harmless phantoms on their errands

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Haunted Houses.” The prosthetic rig is shamelessly stolen from the Body Collectors house during a former Halloween Horror Nights year, and most of the other effects are things frequently used in their houses as well as various others.
> 
> Endless thanks to Chunkymilk for beta services! Anything that sucks is 100% my fault.

It never got as cold as it should in Motorcity—there was Deluxe sitting overhead, shunting extra heat and waste down on them, and too much concrete to soak up all the warmth and radiate it back—but the dip in temperature once fall rolled around was still noticeable. The languid oppressiveness of summer rolled back, everyone started getting just a bit more keyed up, and the colors that should have come from the changing leaves came instead from the hats, scarves, sweaters, and coats pulled out of storage.

The most important thing about fall, though, was Halloween.

Halloween was probably the biggest celebration in Motorcity, just about everyone turning up at least for a short while to party with their neighbors. Christmas might be technically more popular, but it was more of a private affair for individual families and groups of friends; Halloween was public, everyone out in the streets between the carnival and trick-or-treating. The gangs all called a temporary truce, though fights still broke out as the party wore on. It was hectic and raucous like Motorcity herself. 

It was, hands down, Chuck’s favorite holiday. Costumes, too much sugar, and an excuse to binge on horror movies. He always tried to plan for it, get in the mood early and help the Oracle set up a special LARP session. The special session was always good, whether they set aside Raymanthia for a totally different setting or set up a short term dark storyline that wouldn’t do too much damage to the overall kingdom’s standings. Costumes were always an undertaking; it took advanced planning to put anything really good together out of scavenged scraps. This year he’d had to go simple, just an old lich character he’d created as a villain for the LARP a previous year, but with Dutch’s help at least the makeup looked great.

But the _most_ important thing about Halloween was the Duke of Detroit’s annual Party. 

Well, party was an understatement. The Duke was an extravagant man, everything loud and colorful and in excess. Normally it was a hassle for the Burners and everyone else in the city, but Halloween was the only time that his penchant for theatrics was actually appreciated. As in everything else he went all out, setting up a huge chunk of his territory for a veritable theme park and block party combined, a creepshow festival that started early and didn’t wind down until the last drunken stragglers tottered out the next morning. One year it supposedly ran for two entire days.

The Party had started as just that, before adding a haunted house and finally sprawling out into its current configuration: one of the scrapyards and a run-down adjacent building set up as a haunted house attraction, a makeshift outdoor theater screening whatever horror movies they could get their hands on, and—just far enough away and around a corner to keep the noise from drowning out the flicks—a bazaar with carnival games and vendor stalls.

The bazaar had grown out of the demand for something parents could do with their kids, since the movies tended toward the bloody and the haunted house was the Duke’s baby, notorious for sending the more faint-hearted denizens of Motorcity screaming out its doors. So the stalls and games opened early, bridging the gap between early evening trick-or-treating and the late night drunken gore-fest.

It was also, happily enough, a huge boost for the area in both morale and hard economics. Local businesses and artists could sell their wares and get extra eyes on their offerings. The holiday spirit (and, to be perfectly honest, the alcohol) made everyone content and a bit looser than normal with their funds; anyone who couldn’t pay with money exchanged their own crafts or IOUs for future services. Barter was a necessary layer to an economy as strained as Motorcity’s, and the Halloween bash was no exception.

Chuck was ready early, waiting impatiently for Mike so they could leave already. Dutch, done up as Frankenstein and even taller than usual in platform shoes, was helping Tennie put a few final touches on her android costume. Texas had shoved his dragon mask up onto the top of his head and was proceeding to poke the fuzzy cat ears Julie was wearing. 

Finally, after what Chuck would swear was _forever_ (but was actually only like eight more minutes) Mike drove up, spilling out of Mutt and apologizing for being late. “Sorry guys, Rayon wanted to discuss a new order so it took a bit longer than I thought.”

“Great, I think we’re all ready, so as soon as you’ve got your costume…” Chuck said, trailing off as Mike shrugged.

“Don’t have one. Been busy scavenging for parts and dealing with those last couple missions,” he explained, as if that was any kind of excuse. 

Chuck folded his arms. “That is ridiculous, Mikey, and also completely unacceptable.” Grabbing Mike and dragging him back toward Mutt’s still open drivers side door, he continued, “We can at least get your face painted when we get there. You heathen.”

Mike politely did not laugh at him.

—

Jacob’s food truck was parked not far into the fray, festooned with strings of tiny hanging ghosts and a few bats, grinning skulls tacked onto the menu board. For once his green, spurting, noxious concoctions seemed appropriately gross. Kids and teenagers lined up to buy, double dog daring one another to find and eat the grossest thing up for sale. Jacob was ecstatic, so Mike threw him a proud thumbs-up as they hiked past.

“Alright, guys, what’s the plan?” Mike tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, struggling manfully not to scratch his nose and smear his werewolf makeup everywhere. Naturally, he had begun to itch almost the second it had gone on. He scratched idly at his pants leg in hopes that it would help. 

Chuck looked around, grinning and standing tall in a way Mike usually only saw when Lord Vanquisher was surveying Raymanthia. Distracted by the sight, Mike staggered a bit as he was almost trampled by a large swarm of costumed children being herded toward the exit. “Easy, little buddies,” he laughed, ruffling the hair of a small witch who solemnly declared his makeup to be awesome.

“We should hit the scare house first. The line will probably get really long.” Chewing his lip, Chuck looked in the direction of the film screening. “We’ll miss Night of the Living Dead but I’ve seen it like 40 times and have a copy.” 

Texas was attempting to drag Julie off to bob for apples, insisting that “I can beat everybody, what with my muscular neck and iron jaw. C’mon Tiffany, it’ll be great. You can have the stuffed animal thingy when Texas wipes the floor with the competition.” 

Julie narrowed her eyes at the three hundredth wrong name Texas had called her, hands on her hips. “Focus, Texas. Haunted house first, then you can demonstrate your…prowess.” Hopefully when the competition was less adorable children who actually wanted the prizes and more drunken adults just looking for an excuse to get their dates’ shirts wet.

Chuck led them in the direction of the run-down haunted house, waving his hands and regaling Mike with the highlights of previous years. “And I hear it’s supposed to be even better this time, apparently they found some sort of crazy makeup and FX whiz who came up with some low-cost but high impact techniques. It’s always kinda dark so it’s hard to see, but I wonder if we could talk the Duke into letting us in after closing to see everything up close.” 

“One of the Duke’s employees asked me for some advice on some simple animatronic effects, but wouldn’t tell me what they were for,” Dutch said, squeezing Tennie’s hand. “I can’t wait to see how they have everything rigged.” 

“You should do some environmental art next time,” Tennie said, bouncing a bit in anticipation. “I bet they could always use some more help, and maybe you could get us access to a few parts I’d like for our waste recycling system in exchange. I promise I’ll actually let you help install it,” she grinned. “A little.”

A sudden bang of pyrotechnics and a small cadre of costumed henchmen announced the presence of the Duke himself slightly before his own high kick and No. 2’s “monsters and ghouls, announcing the Duke of Hell!” 

Speak of the devil. 

And that was exactly what he was too, emerging from some unholy amalgamation of stretch limo and hearse; tall and lean and red with, no surprise, a rather excessively majestic pair of horns mounted on his head. Showoff.

“Mr. Chilton,” he drawled, staring sharply over the tops of his sunglasses before sweeping around to loom behind Chuck and smell his hair. None of them had ever figured out why he did that all the time, but it never stopped being weird. “And if it isn’t Motorcity’s own scream queen! Enjoying the show? It is impressive, is it not?”

Chuck hunkered into himself and edged away toward Mike. “Yeah, it’s great,” Mike said flatly, cutting Chuck off before he could respond. “We were just on our way to enjoy it, if that’s not a problem.” 

“Of course not,” Duke laughed, bending all the way back and then forward again to slap his knee with the force of it. “Just dropping in to check on things and make sure there’s no…trouble.”

“Nope, everything’s great. And if there’s gonna be any trouble, it sure won’t be us starting it,” Mike said pointedly, ignoring Julie’s warning cough. She was going to have words with that boy later; he should know better than to antagonize someone as touchy as the Duke. 

Duke raised an eyebrow and started to sneer, opening his mouth when No. 2 loudly popped a particularly large bubble of gum and shifted. It seemed to be some sort of signal, as the Duke just forced a grin showing entirely too many teeth. “That sounds like a plan. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have adoring fans who are far more deserving of my time.”

The Burners looked at each other, letting out a collective breath of relief. “So…haunted house, right?” Tennie offered, starting in that direction and tugging Dutch along. 

“Yeah!” Chuck said, shaking himself back into a smile and moving to lead the way. 

—-

It was immediately obvious when they reached the buffer area for the house. There was no lighting save for a few dull, flickering sources stashed here and there to indicate the path. In the dark, the hulls of cars and piles of parts made jagged, irregular mountains. Sounds of creaking metal and scurrying seemed to echo, interspersed with sharp, wet noises that might have been something becoming dinner. It was almost impossible to isolate the source, or to tell which were the normal background of abandoned urban sprawl and which were piped in via hidden speakers. Okay, so the growling was probably just pulled from a “spooky” sound effects collection. Mike remembered the size and temperament of a few animals he’d run into scavenging; well, it was probably fake. 

This wasn’t so bad, but he glanced over at Chuck to be sure as they rounded a corner and stepped into the circle of flickering streetlight outside the boarded over and half-demolished building. Chuck was super into this apparently, but he was also the jumpiest person Mike had ever met, so he felt at a loss whether his shiver was one of nervousness or anticipation. Maybe it was both.

“You sure about this?” he asked under his breath, shifting a bit to bump his shoulder against Chuck’s.

“Mikey, please,” Chuck huffed, frowning. “It’ll be fine. It’s not like there’s going to be _kittens_ in there.”

And it was fine. Mike wasn’t exactly immune to the mounting tension of close corridors and unexpected ambushes by costumed employees, but he was more impressed by the effort put into everything. Not to mention Chuck’s practically vibrating excitement, the almost too tight grasp of his fingers when Mike reached out and grabbed his hand (just to make sure Chuck was okay, of course, not because it was getting to him, don’t be silly). There were sections of unstable floor that threatened to give way and fling them off balance and rooms so full of strobing lights and mirrors that they could hardly tell which way to go or when an employee was about to appear in their faces. Chuck was particularly fascinated with a young man with some sort of elaborate gore-encrusted attachment that made it seem like the monsters had partially removed his spine, splayed open and shifting pitifully. Mike looked away. Texas tried to poke him.

Everything was fine, that is, until the tunnel. When they had to hunker down in a line and crawl, one by one, through the dark surrounded by cold dripping water and whatever it was that hunt down to brush their faces and shoulders. Until the stuttered, mournful noise somewhere between a moan and an awful crunching and creaking came from the girl who moved in all the wrong ways, bent limbs carrying her at them past too small openings in the walls. She was behind them, in front of them, almost everywhere at once and they all freaked out even more due to bumping into each other as they scrambled for the exit. Mike could hear the “ka-chaw” as Texas reacted by instinct during their scramble, on edge, only to mournfully inform Julie that “I can’t punch it, that’s not fair.”

It must have been a hologram, something like the ones Julie used; somehow that didn’t make Mike feel any better. When she rushed them at the exit, and the open wreck of her mouth hitting him in the face lined up with a sudden blast of cold air from both sides, he yelped embarrassingly loud. Chuck laughed ahead of him; he was probably never going to live this down.

They emerged, disheveled and damp, Chuck’s hair mussed and shoved back away from one eye wide open in manic glee. “Holy shit that was the best one yet!” 

Julie herded a now too-quiet Texas out toward the bazaar. “Hey Texas, bet I can whup you at bobbing for apples.” 

Shaking himself a bit, Texas plastered on a slightly strained grin. “You’re crazy, Ashley. Look at this neck. I’m like a cobra. A _king_ cobra. Texas strikes fast and always hits his mark. Wa-chow!”

Dutch and Tennie had stumbled out and immediately set off to talk mechanics on some of the choicest spots, focused and happy. As Tennie snuggled under one long arm, Dutch glanced back. “Guys, we’re gonna grab some food and then we’ll meet you at the movie field. I think they’re running Carpenter’s The Thing and Candyman!” 

Chuck gave a thumbs up and waved them off, turning and clapping a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “You okay, Mikey?”

Oh, to hell with it. Mike laughed weakly and hid his face in Chuck’s shoulder. “Ghosts suck.”


End file.
